How long have you been in business?
11 years
Do you have a company by-line?
Success built on customer care
What brought you into the business?
Jan loved crystals and had a market stall for 2 years. They decided to close the stall and go completely wholesale, we sold stock from our own garage and went out on the van. Chris has always been motivated to take the crystals to the public.
Have you noticed many changes over the years?
People are more accepting towards the healing side of crystals. When we started 10 years ago people were only interested in fossils and collecting minerals, they wanted specimens and unpolished stones. Where now, we have customers really appreciating the uniqueness of the crystals and the meaning behind them, people are choosing a variety of polished and unpolished.
What stands out as the best part of running your business?
The best part of our business has always been the traveling. Going abroad to source the crystals. What other job would let you travel around the world buying stock and doing something you enjoy?
What’s the worst?
Oh definitely the weight of the barrels (laughs Jan), unloading the artic at 3am in the pouring rain!
Chris adds “I want to mention all the nice people we have met over the years – and also the ‘challenging’ people” He says with a big grin on his face.
Is there anything you’d do differently if you could do it again?
Chris and Jan look at themselves – we don’t think we would. We are both content. They both then said, perhaps not to grow as big as we have. We have lost some personal contact with our customers which is something we always said Gemstone UK is all about. This is something we are always working on – the personal touch.
We have always said one thing we have always done is keep to our niche market. Specialising in one thing ‘Brasilian’ instead of spreading ourselves too thin trying to be the best at everything.
What do you hope to achieve in the next 10 years?
We are concentrating on our operations overseas and building on the business we already have, without losing that important ‘personal touch’ with our customers. We are also building the business to move forwards with our family, let the younger generation have a turn.
Do you have a memorable funny (business) story?
Jan laughs, Chris pulls a face. “I don’t know why you are laughing”. We were unloading a shipment in the rain with the forklift truck. Chris was with the barrels while a member of staff was driving the forklift. All he had to do was pick up the barrel. As he moved around the yard he drove too close to Chris. Chris shouted to reverse, instead of reversing the forklift came straight towards Chris squashing him against the barrel.
“I couldn’t believe it I couldn’t see Chris straight away, it’s funny now, but at the time I was dead scared”, Jan said..
Chris came away with broken ribs.
You must have something a little funnier than Chris hurting himself?
Oh yeah, for those that know Chris will laugh at this one!
We ordered a beautiful Lions head to be carved out of Moldavite, we were dead excited to see it. When it arrived, we couldn’t believe it, the man had only gone and carved the torso of a women. How funny is that? He must have known was Chris was like, can you believe it?
Oh another time (they are on a roll now), but this isn’t isn’t really funny, but it is a memory. It was the first time Jan had been to Brasil on a buying trip. There was piles of quartz, lovely pieces. She went to pick up a lovely piece of quartz from this big pile. It had some pyrite in it as well. As Jan picked it up, a shard of quartz stuck right up her finger, from her nail to her knuckle. We still bought it, it lives at home now, something’s are just meant to stay with you!
What are your favourite crystals?
What do you look for in a customer?
I think, People who are similar to ourselves. We treat people the way we like to be treated, those that are happy and positive. We believe we choose our customers as much as they choose us.
How do you source your stock?
Straight from the country of origin and we import all our stock ourselves.
What preparation do you do for a show?
After many years of exhibiting it just works, we don't know quite how our display will turnout and often we get a nudge to take some items that we had previously overlooked and there'll be a customer waiting for them!
As an experienced exhibitor what advice would you want to share with others?
Choose your stock carefully, like the products you are selling, don’t sit behind your stall looking glum. Be cheerful and smile to your customers, talking to people will be the key to your success. If you have chosen your stock carefully it will sell itself, it is you that you have to sell to the customer.
If you would like to meet Chris or Jan, seek them out at a Rock n Gem show or see their advert for full details of where you can contact them, or visit there website – Gemstone UK.